The Last Word

To me, calculating the effects of climate change is akin to, trying to fathom the severity of a hurricane from its origins on a rather intemperate, muggy day, in other words; we simply have no idea. The consequences may burst upon us right out of the blue as a phenomenal storm, the likes we have never witnessed before, which engulfs numerous low laying coastlines or an imperceptible, ever increasing loss of oxygen from the atmosphere, Just like the ozone layer.Apocalyptic as it sounds, you had really better get used to such phenomenon because one of them will be the messenger of an exponential event, which the likes you have never witnessed.

All this un-educated thinking is akin to the plastic carrier bag analogy is it not?“Every little helps the environment!”If everyone in a flooded area dips an empty cup into the torrent of water, things will work out in the long run?

Do you comprehend the point I am making? Climate Change is not way down the road of time. It is upon us NOW. It is NOW we are starting to feel the consequences and effects. These one in five hundred year flood events as predicted and calculated by computer modelling by the Environment Agency and Met office, are becoming rather frequent do you not think?

The precipitous analogy: The more C02 in the atmosphere: The more heat. The more heat: The more humidity. The more humidity: The more water vapour.The more water vapour: The heavier the rainfall.The heavier the rainfall: The more flooding.

The more empty words: The less meaning. The less meaning: The less commitment. The lack of commitment:The more selfish, material preservation. The more material preservation: the more C02.

To add to my despair is the thought that each nation went home after this conference with a signed piece of paper promising action in our time!I really think that pieces of paper will not resolve our present predicament. The Kyoto ones did not! As for curbing global warming and adapting to its impact, the former will end up being a political pipe dream and the latter, a no choice option!

By the way, I seem to remember from my history, someone else with a piece of paper telling us everything will be all right in our time, and that piece of paper was signed (according to a Mr. Chamberlain) by a ‘very admirable’ man. Coincidentally, to sum up all these perpetual conferences, meetings, protocols, summits and conventions, committees, etc., a quote from (to my mind) a really admirable man:

“They go on in strange paradox, deciding only to be undecided, resolved only to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity. All powerfull to be impotent"...Winston Churchill.

Let me explain something to you: cutting global emissions of CO2 does not mean reducing the rise in parts per million belched out by coal-fired power stations or other such fossil-fuel powered plants. All it means is cutting the rate at which they are rising. In other words, slowing the rate at which they are increasingly being pumped into the atmosphere. We can't go on like this. In fact, some climate scientists say that 380 parts per million is too high and that we need not only to slow the increase in CO2 but also to clean up the mess we've already made. Look at this logically: if 380ppm of CO2 is already having an adverse effect on the world’s climate, then how can a small reduction of the rising rate of output cure anything?